The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007), Andrew Dominik, A
In 2007 I named this my number 1 film – over Sunshine, There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men.
I’m not 100% I would make that statement again, but I still think it is one hell of a picture.
It is beautiful, it is complex, the performances are fantastic and the dialogue hums. It definitely looses something on DVD, even if you have a super HD television.
There are rumblings out there of this becoming the cult success it deserves – in a few more years, I imagine, it will be recognized as a masterpiece.
Look, I adore this movie but it does have same fairly serious pacing issues that I attribute to studio-mandated editing. The third act, post-Jesse’s death, feels like it was chopped to hell. For instance, why does Zooey Deschanel show up for like 45 seconds as Ford’s unexplained girlfriend and then disappear? In the novel, to which Dominik is otherwise very faithful, the action after Jesse dies take up a full third of the book. My suspicion is that this was closer to the truth in Dominik’s rumored three-hour cut. Where’s a director’s-cut release when you really need it? Maybe someday.
Comment by Brian — November 8, 2009 @ 6:14 pm